The argumentative behavior of Myrrhina towards her friend,
Cleostrata, in Act 2, Scene 2, of Plautus's Casina has struck many
scholars as inconsistent with her amicable behavior elsewhere in the
play. (1) When the two women meet in this scene, which is their first
encounter on stage, Cleostrata expresses indignation towards her
husband, and Myrrhina counters that her grounds for indignation are not
valid. The friction between the two women is obvious, but later they
cooperate fully in Cleostrata's efforts to humiliate her husband
and foil his plan to rape the slave girl, Casina. The charge of
inconsistency appears as early as Peter Langen (1886, 127), who stated
simply, "Der Charakter der Murrhina ist nicht konsequent durch
gefuhrt" (The character of Myrrhina is not executed consistently
throughout), and as recently as Ariana Traill (2011, 502), who writes,
"The betrayal is as short-lived as it is unexpected." (2) To
Eduard Fraenkel (2007, 204), the difference in her behavior is so
striking that he concludes it must be the result of Plautine
interpolation:

The principles which Myrrhina espouses in lines 199-211 fit neither
her character nor her behaviour during the rest of the play nor the
nature of her friendship with Cleostrata. The two women are in
complete harmony; the intimacy of their relationship is studiously
emphasized at the beginning of this scene (179-83). Cleostrata is
deeply worried; such cold-blooded opposition by her friend, as it
is portrayed in only one set of lines, 199-211, is intolerable: it
contradicts the way the Greek poet has clearly shaped the whole
play.

The primary goal of my paper is to demonstrate that Myrrhina's
behavior in Scene 2.2 is not inconsistent with her otherwise strong
expressions of solidarity with Cleostrata; in fact, she acts precisely
as a friend should by warning Cleostrata that her opposition to her
husband could get her into serious trouble. Before delving into this, I
will examine the methodological problems behind Langen's original
proclamation and investigate why his conclusion--that Myrrhina's
behavior is inconsistent--perseveres even though his methodology is now
considered outdated.

Returning to the dramatic world of the Casina, the trouble arises
when Cleostrata's husband, Lysidamus, makes a particularly overt
and particularly grand effort to gain sexual access to their slave,
Casina, who is of marriageable age. Lysidamus plans to arrange her
marriage to his personal slave, Olympio, so that he can access
Olympio's chambers and rape Casina without arousing the suspicions
of his own wife, Cleostrata. Their son, Euthynicus, who is also
interested in the young woman, has devised a similar plan to marry
Casina to his own slave. Casina has no lines and the audience is never
shown her perspective; she is a hapless bystander whose future will be
decided by a handful of citizens who fight for the prestige that comes
from controlling Casina as property. (3) Cleostrata, aware of her
husband's intentions, attempts to keep Lysidamus from Casina by
lending practical support to the efforts of their son. In private
conversation with Myrrhina in Scene 2.2, Cleostrata argues that she, not
her husband, should be allowed to arrange Casina's marriage,
because Casina belongs to her. Myrrhina objects that women have no
property and, therefore, everything Cleostrata claims to own actually
belongs to her husband. We will look more closely at their disagreement
momentarily.

Langen's search for problematic characters reflects a now
outdated methodology: the nineteenth-century German philological
tradition valued close reading with a view towards detecting
inconsistencies, seen as corruptions created by the manuscript
tradition, and then restoring the original text. While the approach was
applied broadly to classical texts, it was particularly attractive for
the study of Roman comedy, since the plays were adapted from now-lost
Greek models, and indeed little Greek New Comedy was available at all.
(4) This seemed to be the most fruitful way of uncovering the Greek
original, as if one could peel back the (inferior) Roman layer and
reveal the unadulterated masterpiece within--a desire that reflects a
long tradition of philhellenism and the belief that Roman literature is
merely derivative of Greek. But this approach is obviously flawed: if
one sets out looking for inconsistencies, they will be found everywhere.
Mary Daly (1985, 11) explains the nature of this circular trap:

One of the false gods of theologians, philosophers, and other
academics is called Method. It commonly happens that the choice of
a problem is determined by method, instead of method being
determined by the problem. This means that thought is subjected to
an invisible tyranny.... The tyranny of methodolatry hinders new
discoveries. It prevents us from raising questions never asked
before and from being illumined by ideas that do not fit into
pre-established boxes and forms.

Under this tyranny of methodolatry, scholars found exactly what
they were looking for. In fact, Langen's problematic statement
appears in a section called "Widerspruche, Inkonsequenzen und
psychologische Unwahrscheinlichkeiten" (Contradictions,
Inconsistencies, and Psychological Improbabilities [1886, 89]). The very
organization of his essay betrays the constraints of his methodology one
prevalent in his time: when a scene did not make sense to the reader,
the reader assumed the error lay with the text, not with his own
interpretation.

Protestors against this model for interpreting Roman comedy can be
found as early as the early twentieth century when Henry Prescott (1916,
126) proclaimed: "[T]he supposed abnormal features ... may not be
explained as Roman defects due to contamination or retractation,"
but can be attributed rather to "internal or external necessity
which, in my opinion, made them inevitable in the Greek original."
Prescott's objections went largely unnoticed, and Kathryn
Gutzwiller and Ann Michelini (1991, 67-8) demonstrate how the early
German tradition continued to influence and limit subsequent approaches
by privileging attention to minutiae and questions of authenticity
regarded by some as the most objective form of literary study. Although
few scholars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries set
out to uncover a Greek model by looking for inconsistencies, many
nevertheless accept the received tradition that Myrrhina's
character is inconsistent. (5) The recent trend is to dismiss it as
unproblematic, stating that the dramatic necessity of the scene
justifies the perceived inconsistencies in her character. (6) In the
spirit of Prescott, I posit that Plautus wrote the script with care
(whether he closely followed or altered this scene from his Greek model)
and that Myrrhina's behavior in this scene can be understood in the
context of her character, without resorting to the non-explanation of
dramatic necessity.

It is not simply inherited methodological problems that hold us
back, but also an androcentric bias that our culture brings to the text,
which becomes evident when we look at the various explanations offered
for Myrrhina's behavior in this scene. The confrontation between
Myrrhina and Cleostrata is often interpreted as a debate between male
and female points of view, and several early-twentieth-century scholars
concluded that Myrrhina's behavior makes more sense if it comes
from a man. Philippe Legrand (1902, 371) proposed that the oddity was
due to contamination, because Plautus assigned lines to Myrrhina that
Diphilus had assigned to a male character in his Kleroumenoi, the
professed Greek source of Plautus's play (Cas. 31-2). (7) Fraenkel
(1922, 299-301) agreed, seeing parallels to Menaechmi 775-802, in which
a father rebukes his daughter for complaining about her husband. (8)
These interpretations graft a relationship between two women onto a
relationship between a man and a woman, not allowing for the possibility
that the women's relationship with each other is the primary
motivation for how they behave. These hypotheses reveal an assumption of
maleness as the default gender, suggesting that Plautus has not done a
sufficient job in transforming this particular character from male to
female.

Androcentric bias in the study of Greek New Comedy is discussed at
length by Madeleine Henry (1986, 141-2), who argues that we have been
trained to think about comedy in terms of characters (ethoi) and that
the male characters monopolize our attention. We are heavily influenced
by formalistic approaches, like that of Northrop Frye (1957, 163), whose
summary of New Comedy (Greek and Roman) perfectly encapsulates our
preconceptions of the genre: "What normally happens is that a young
man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition,
usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the
plot enables the hero to have his will" (emphasis mine). Although
not all plots fit Frye's summary, it is nonetheless common to
interpret New Comedy as the story of the young citizen man, and since he
is the focal point, we view other characters in relation to him: his
father, his mother, his best friend (male, of course), his trusty slave,
or the woman he desires.

Thus we have a context in which to think about how men relate to
other men, but when women are involved, we have been trained to think of
them in terms of their relationships to men. When Myrrhina speaks, we
think, "What bearing do her words have on the interests of the main
characters in this play, that is, the men (father, son, and two male
slaves) who vie for the girl?" In the early twentieth century,
Legrand (1902) and Fraenkel (1922) went so far as to conclude that
Myrrhina's lines must literally have been written for a male
character. In the later twentieth century, scholars gravitated towards a
less drastic solution but still understood the scene in terms of male
versus female points of view: Eckard Lefevre (1979, 320) posited that
Scene 2.2 is from the Diphilian original, in which Myrrhina is
"shy" (that is, fearful of opposing male authority), but later
scenes are Plautine interpolations, showing a bold Myrrhina who is
willing to take on the male establishment. Monika Waltenberger (1981,
444) did not propose that Plautus has adapted the Greek model per se,
but believed that there was an inconsistency, which she explained as
Plautus making a metatheatrical statement acknowledging the male actor
behind the mask.

By viewing the play narrowly as the story of the citizen man, we
mistakenly map all relationships back to him. The received scholarly
tradition only compounds the problem, because even as we stop thinking
about Roman comedies as modified versions of Greek originals, we
nonetheless cling to the idea that Myrrhina here represents and
advocates for the masculine point of view. If we approach Scene 2.2 as
an interaction between two female friends, however, we are able to
understand that Myrrhina is not the playwright's proxy for a man;
rather, she acts precisely as we would expect a friend to act, with
Cleostrata's best interests at heart, and in a way that Myrrhina
believes will be most effective. Her words do explain the masculine
point of view, but not because she agrees with it; rather, she uses her
awareness of the dominant, male culture to alert Cleostrata to the
danger of opposing male authority. But to understand why so many have
viewed Myrrhina's behavior in Scene 2.2 as unfriendly and therefore
inconsistent with her behavior later in the play, we must first look
more closely at the nature of her disagreement with Cleostrata. We turn
now to a more detailed reading of this scene.

The Cause of Cleostrata's Distress

The conflict between Myrrhina and Cleostrata is prompted by a
disagreement Cleostrata has with her husband, Lysidamus. As master of
the house, he claims the right to arrange Casina's marriage, while
Cleostrata claims the same right as the person who oversees the daily
operations of the female slaves. Their positions reveal a conflict
between formal laws and the unwritten customs regarding a married
woman's relationship to her female slaves: Cleostrata's
attendants are legally the property of her husband, but the female
slaves are under the charge of the mistress of the house, and Cleostrata
has grown accustomed to making decisions about Casina's care. We
are also told in the prologue that Casina is a foundling whom Cleostrata
has raised since infancy as if her own daughter, suggesting a possible
sentimental connection as well (Cas. 45-6). (9)

When Cleostrata expresses her frustration about the situation, she
stresses that Casina belongs to her, a claim that spurs much debate,
both in the play and in the previously mentioned scholarship:

quin rnihi ancillulam ingratiis postulat,
quae mea est, quae meo educta sumptu siet,
vilico suo se dare,
sed ipsus earn amat. (193-5a) (10)
But [my husband] demands, against my wishes, to give my little
slave girl to his foreman in marriage, a girl who is mine, who was
brought up at my own expense, but he himself is in love with her.

The issue of ownership (legal or otherwise) is emphasized by the
contrast of mihi, mea, and meo with suo and se. Mahalia Way (2000, 204)
explains this as a conflict between Lysidamus's legal ownership
over his wife's peculium and Cleostrata's de facto authority
over it. For Way, "The spouses' struggle over Casina is not
over a girl, but over what the control of Casina represents, over which
kind of power will prevail in this household." Cleostrata's
objection shows that her husband's actions are contrary to her
expectation and therefore unfair: custom dictates that Cleostrata have
this authority over Casina, and when Lysidamus overrides this authority,
Cleostrata perceives an injustice. It is worth noting that
Cleostrata's sense of fairness in this scene is defined as what is
fair for herself, not for Casina: Cleostrata's repeated use of the
first-person pronoun and possessive adjective shows that she is focused
on her own wishes. With the stakes so high, it is all the more important
that Cleostrata receive support from her friend, Myrrhina, and all the
more hurtful when she does not.

The final line (195a) of Cleostrata's objection underscores
that the issue is personal: the affront is even worse because Lysidamus
is in love with the girl. Fraenkel (1922, 298-9) originally thought the
line was a Plautine interpolation, for it seemed out of place to him.
(11) Indeed, I believe the line is supposed to stand out: it plants a
new thought into the minds of the audience--that Cleostrata may be
motivated by something more visceral, for Lysidamus's interest in
another woman is an affront to the woman of the house (cf. Men. 782-3;
Asin. 856-7, 871-4, 922-34). (12) With line 195a Plautus hints that
Cleostrata will be characterized as the nagging and overbearing wife,
"the troublesome shrew, who, like a stereotypical uxor dotata,
seeks to invert the proper power structure of her marriage" (Moore
1998, 170). (13) As such, the audience expects her to be an
unsympathetic character whose vendetta against her husband will be
deemed inappropriate for its personal nature, like the wives of
Asinaria, Mercator, and Menaechmi, all earlier Plautine plays. (14) A
good wife, in contrast, should look the other way regarding her
husband's love affairs, provided that the other woman is of
noncitizen status and that he does not waste household resources on his
lover. Timothy Moore (1998, 170) demonstrates that Plautus's
initial portrayal of Cleostrata as the stereotypical bad wife is
deliberately crafted to lead the audience astray, for Plautus thereafter
will slowly align the audience's sympathies with Cleostrata and
against Lysidamus, contrary to expectation. In fact, as one of
Plautus's later plays, the playwright is having fun with audience
expectations, setting up various characters as recognizable stock
figures, only later to show us that our assumptions are wrong.

As the play progresses, Cleostrata presents less and less as a
stereotypically jealous wife, largely ignoring the theme of sexual
rivalry and instead focusing on the ownership of Casina. This is the
most effective tactic Cleostrata can take against Lysidamus, and the one
she uses when addressing him directly in a later scene: si facias recte
aut commode, / mesinas curare ancillas, quae mea est curatio (If you are
going to do what is right and proper, you will allow me to oversee the
slave girls, which is my responsibility, 260-1). Since it is socially
acceptable and legal for Lysidamus to sleep with as many of his female
slaves as he desires, Cleostrata could not hope for much success in
objecting to Lysidamus's planned infidelity. (15) Her focus on
custom and responsibility towards her charges makes her a more
sympathetic character: she is not asking Lysidamus to cede any
unconventional power, but merely to allow the return of
'traditional' gender roles, whereby it is Cleostrata's
duty as mistress of the household to arrange Casina's marriage.

To express her personal displeasure, Cleostrata stirs up some
(additional) marital discord by refusing to cook her husband's
lunch and verbally abusing him (150-61). Cleostrata is forced to
exercise power within the sphere to which she has been relegated; she
takes revenge by neglecting her wifely duties. Kathleen McCarthy (2000,
80) likens this act of rebellion to that of slaves in Roman comedy:
because the husband/wife relationship is immutable, with the wife being
eternally subordinate, Cleostrata's success in the play is only a
temporary aberration. Unlike the clever slave (stock type servus
callidus), however, who usually rebels against the master of the house
(stock type senex) on behalf of the master's son (stock type
adulescens) and has no personal investment other than the joy of duping
the master, Cleostrata rebels for intensely personal reasons. (16) She
will nonetheless have equal support from the audience, for, like the
clever slave, her success will positively impact the adulescens. (17)
Furthermore, Cleostrata's interference is the only thing preventing
Lysidamus from raping the foundling slave girl, whom the audience
expects to be revealed as a citizen. Thus Cleostrata's defiance of
her husband will seem justified because the audience hopes the lecherous
senex amator will be defeated. Elaine Fantham (2015, 103) argues that
the audience would judge Lysidamus's behavior negatively because it
causes him to neglect his marital obligations, risks disqualifying
Casina from a citizen marriage that is her birthright, and blocks his
son from obtaining the girl he desires. (18) Meanwhile, Cleostrata feels
powerless to affect Lysidamus's plans for Casina directly, and her
emotions get the best of her in the scenes that follow. In fact, it is
Cleostrata's focus on her relationship with her husband that
distracts her attention from her relationship with her friend, Myrrhina.

The Conflict between Myrrhina and Cleostrata

The struggle between husband and wife quickly becomes a struggle
between two friends when Cleostrata seeks out her neighbor, Myrrhina,
for emotional support. Myrrhina greets Cleostrata with the line, nam
quod tibi est aegre, idem mi est dividiae (Whatever troubles you is
equally troubling to me, 180-1), leading the audience to expect that
Myrrhina, after hearing Cleostrata's account, will side with her
completely. The conversation, however, turns suddenly sour, and the
exchange has sparked much scholarly interest. Cleostrata explains her
problem as follows: nec mihi ius meum optinendi optio est (There is no
opportunity for me to obtain my right, 190). But Myrrhina, instead of
validating Cleostrata's indignation, replies with skepticism: mira
sunt, vera si praedicas, nam viri / ius suom ad mulieres optinere hau
queunt (That's odd, if what you say is true, since usually it is
husbands who are not able to obtain their right from their wives,
191-2). Not only does she fail to agree with her friend, but she takes a
jab at women at the same time, for ius (right) refers to sex, and the
line demonizes wives who withhold it. The comment reflects the Roman
view that married women automatically consent to sex with their
husbands, and the audience is encouraged to dismiss any woman (or man)
who disagrees. (19) Myrrhina's joke, and a few more lines that I
will discuss shortly, undoubtedly influenced early scholars who
postulated that the lines belonged to a male character in the Greek
model. But misogynistic jokes delivered by female characters are not
uncommon in Plautus, and the audience might have appreciated the irony,
but would likely not have found the lines to be problematic. (20) Just
as Plautus initially leads the audience to believe that Cleostrata will
be a stereotypically jealous wife, here we are led to believe that
Myrrhina will be a stereotypically good wife, where 'good' is
defined as 'supporting male interests.'

Our understanding of Myrrhina evolves with the subsequent dialogue,
which suggests that she interrupts Cleostrata not because she disagrees
with her sentiments, but because she believes Cleostrata's position
is socially risque. When Cleostrata argues that Casina is her property,
Myrrhina attempts to silence her (195a-7):

Myrrhina's ita est shows us how the playwright intends the
audience to interpret the command tace: Myrrhina does not want anyone
else to hear what Cleostrata has said, but when Cleostrata reassures her
that they are alone, Myrrhina feels comfortable continuing the
conversation. Sharon James (2015, 110) notes: "This is a striking
sign of women's awareness that their speech is circumscribed, that
there are subjects they ought not to discuss in public and, perhaps,
words and formulations they ought not to be overheard using."
Contrast this with an exchange between two sisters, Pamphila and
Panegyris, in Plautus's Stichus, in which the objector genuinely
disagrees with her sister and supports unquestioning loyalty to
one's husband (34-47):

PAM. Is that what bothers you, sister? That [our husbands] are not
doing their duty, but you are doing yours?

PAN. Yes! That's it.

PAM. Hush! Don't let me hear this from you again.

PAN. Why not?

PAM. Because, by Pollux, I think it is right that every wise person
observe and do his or her duty. For this reason, sister, I advise you,
even though you are older, to remember your duty: even if they are
reprobates and act unfairly towards us, by Pollux let us not make the
problem even bigger, but with every effort we should remember our duty.

PAN. You are right: I'll drop it.

In both plays, the objecting woman issues the command out of a
desire to protect her loved one. In Stichus, however, Pamphila clearly
supports men's interests over women's, and in the ultimate
expression of patriarchal values, Plautus has created a world in which
what is best for the men happens to also be best for the women, thereby
justifying the supremacy of men's needs over women's. In
Casina, the audience might expect that Myrrhina, like Pamphila, truly
aligns herself with male interests, but it will later become clear that
Myrrhina takes this position not because she believes it (in fact, the
playwright never makes her personal opinion known to us), but because
she believes it is the most effective one. While the scene in the
Stichus is a clear-cut debate between the 'good wife,' whose
interests align with those of men, and the 'bad wife, whose
interests are in conflict with those of men, Plautus turns the trope on
its head in Casina. (24)

Myrrhina's oppositional behavior continues for several more
lines while Plautus draws out the characterization of her as good wife,
countering Cleostrata's bad wife. Once Cleostrata convinces
Myrrhina that they can speak safely without being overheard, Myrrhina
objects to Cleostrata's claim that Casina is her property
(198-202):

unde ea tibi est?
nam peculi probam nil habere addecet
clam virum, sed quae habet, partum ei hau commode est,
quin viro aut suptrahat aut stupro invenerit.
hoc viri censeo esse omne quicquid tuom est.
How did this [slave girl] come to be yours? For it is not proper
for an upstanding woman to have private property without her
husband's knowledge. If she has property, she did not come by it
properly, but she stole it from her husband or acquired it by
dishonesty. By this token, I believe everything that is yours
belongs to your husband. (25)

Cleostrata seeks sympathy, but Myrrhina does not give it. Rather,
she appears to undermine the premise of Cleostrata's distress:
Cleostrata is upset because her husband took control of what she
believes is her property, but Myrrhina counters that Cleostrata has no
property. Such a comment risks invalidating Cleostrata's anxiety by
sending the message that her feelings are not justified. It might appear
to the audience, and it certainly appears to Cleostrata, that Myrrhina
is failing to meet the emotional needs of her friend. When Cleostrata
asks for affirmation, Myrrhina openly refuses to grant it. Unlike the
women of the Stichus, who are working towards a common understanding
(for Pamphila asks her sister to explain her objections, then listens
carefully and is persuaded), in Casina the playwright has created
obvious and deliberate tension between Myrrhina and Cleostrata. It is
not until later that we understand Myrrhina's behavior: whatever
sympathy she may have for Cleostrata, Myrrhina knows that the rest of
society will grant her no such compassion. In the meantime, the
playwright keeps us on the edges of our seats, wondering how this
conflict will play out.

The argument culminates when Cleostrata accuses Myrrhina: tu quidem
advorsum tuam amicam omnia loqueris (Indeed you are speaking against
your own friend with everything you say 203). Many scholars agree with
Cleostrata, interpreting Myrrhina's behavior as defiant and
unfriendly But Myrrhina's frustration is a clue that Cleostrata is
misreading the situation, which Plautus has deliberately engineered to
lead Cleostrata, and us, astray. We are supposed, at first, to perceive
Myrrhina as the stereotypically obedient wife who defends the status
quo. But to understand her character more accurately, we must take into
account the lines that immediately follow, in which Myrrhina tries to
explain the misunderstanding (204-7):

tace sis, stulta, et mi ausculta. noli sis tu illi advorsari,
sine amet, sine quod lubet id faciat, quando tibi nil domi delicuom
est.
Quiet, you foolish woman, and listen to what I'm saying! Do not set
yourself against your husband: allow him to love, allow him to do
what he likes, as long as nothing is lacking for you at home.

Again Myrrhina uses tace to silence her friend, not out of
disrespect, but out of concern for her well-being. Followed closely by
sis mi ausculta, the line demonstrates Myrrhina's frustration that
Cleostrata is not listening to her: Cleostrata does not understand that
Myrrhina is making a completely different kind of argument. When
Myrrhina used the command tace just moments before, it was to prevent
her friend from being overheard while speaking against her husband. Now,
Myrrhina is impatient because her own argument is not being heard. She
says that not heeding her advice is foolish (stulta), showing that she
is looking out for her friend in a different way. Instead of meeting
Cleostrata's current emotional need for empathy, Myrrhina is trying
to offer practical advice that will benefit Cleostrata in the long
run.26 She is doing precisely what a good friend should do. Because she
is more emotionally removed from the situation than Cleostrata, Myrrhina
is able to understand it more objectively: she can see that
Cleostrata's actions might get her into trouble and tries to warn
her accordingly.

As Myrrhina's motivations become clearer to the audience,
Cleostrata's continued obtuseness becomes all the more striking.
She steps up her rhetoric against Myrrhina, still believing the argument
is chiefly a battle between the sexes: satin sana es? nam tuquidem
aduorsus tuam istaec rem loquere (Are you insane? For now you are saying
things against even your own interest! 208-9). This line, no doubt,
plays a large role in the early scholarly misinterpretation of this
passage, particularly arguments that Myrrhina's lines in this scene
were originally assigned to a male character. But again, we should not
adopt Cleostrata's interpretation of the dialogue, for Plautus, in
the over-the-top manner of comedy, is constantly reminding us that we
are witnessing a giant misunderstanding, and that Cleostrata's
interpretation of Myrrhina's behavior is wrong. Myrrhina tries once
and for all to clarify that she is actually speaking for
Cleostrata's interests, not against them, when she says (209-13):

MY. Foolish woman! You must always guard against this command from
your husband.

CL. Which command?

MY. "Woman, leave my house." (27)

Finally Myrrhina has phrased her position bluntly: Cleostrata must
watch what she says and does because displeasing her husband could
result in divorce. (28) Myrrhina is as loyal a friend here as she is
later, when she helps Cleostrata orchestrate the deception against her
husband. Plautus has deliberately postponed the moment in which
Myrrhina's true character is revealed, allowing the audience to
experience the tension between the two women as long as possible.

Conflict as a Dramatic Device

The tension between Myrrhina and Cleostrata is real, but it is
worthwhile to ask what purpose such tension could serve, rather than
interpreting it as a mistake. The exchange between the two women serves
as a short agon in which two people debate the issue from different
premises: what is legal (Myrrhina), and what is fair, that is, in
accordance with custom (Cleostrata). The agon is not an uncommon feature
in Greek comedy, and it is plausible that this scene goes back to
Diphilus's original. There is no reason to speculate that the
conflict or its details were invented by Plautus. As a plot device, it
allows the characters to evaluate two ethical systems that are in
conflict. Furthermore, debate between two women of similar social
stations (in this case, married citizen women) is one way for the
playwright to examine two choices with which a woman is faced, as seen
with Antigone and Ismene in Sophocles' Antigone, and the two
sisters in Plautus's Stichus. (29) By splitting the voice of one
character into two, the audience can be privy to what might otherwise be
an internal thought process (the same can be achieved with an
introspective monologue). The debates in Casina and Stichus also give
Plautus the opportunity to engage the audience in a philosophical debate
about the unfairness of a woman's lot in marriage, much like the
agon of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. This is not to suggest that these
playwrights come out strongly or even weakly in favor of women's
rights; they merely acknowledge the fact that women (and perhaps men?)
may have some objections to the existing power structure.

While Cleostrata clings to an abstract principle of fairness,
Myrrhina tries to explain that life is not always fair. And both are
right: surely it is unfair that Lysidamus can disregard his wife's
wishes with impunity. Surely it is unfair that Lysidamus can use his
male authority to rape a young virgin, one whom Cleostrata has raised,
whose future Cleostrata has spent years planning, and whose happiness is
on the line (not to suggest that Cleostrata is concerned with
Casina's happiness, for it is difficult to demonstrate, on the
basis of the text, that she cares about anything other than preventing
her husband from his extramarital liaisons). But Myrrhina is also right:
if Cleostrata opposes her husband in this, she will get little support
from society and may suffer gravely for her culturally inappropriate
intervention. Cleostrata argues desperately for something that will make
her happy right now, although her position turns out to be not in her
best interests overall, while Myrrhina has Cleostrata's long-term
security and happiness in mind.

Myrrhina is the outside observer whose primary goal is to protect
her friend by malting what seems to her to be an objective argument.
Cleostrata and Myrrhina may be talking to each other, but they are
having two very different conversations: Cleostrata seeks emotional
support, but Myrrhina gives practical support. Cleostrata believes
Myrrhina is being unsupportive and misogynistic; Myrrhina sees that
Cleostrata's judgment is clouded by her anger and emotional pain.
Their miscommunication leads to more frustration and hurt feelings. As
the conversation unfolds, Myrrhina realizes that her approach is
creating animosity in the friendship (setting her advorsum suam amicam,
203), but she is willing to risk this disharmony to protect her friend.
Cleostrata, meanwhile, by focusing her energy on her relationship with
her husband, has neglected her relationship with her friend. Her
all-consuming desire for vengeance temporarily interferes with her
ability to catch the signals that Myrrhina really does care about her
and is offering the appropriate kind of support. While Myrrhina's
approach may be unusual, I would not go so far as to call it out of
character or problematic. She is still performing the duties of a
friend, albeit in a different way than Cleostrata (and many scholars)
expect.

Myrrhina's behavior serves another important dramatic function
by instructing the audience how to feel about Casina and Cleostrata. The
scene heightens suspense for the audience by highlighting the danger
faced by Casina, the citizen virgin whom the audience hopes will be
saved from rape. There is a layer of dramatic irony, since Myrrhina
argues a position that is harmful to Casina, not knowing that Casina is
her daughter, as will be revealed in the epilogue. (30) The audience
will side with Cleostrata because Casina's fate is tied to
Cleostrata's success. (31) Furthermore, the exchange warns us that
Cleostrata, by opposing her husband, risks divorce and the financial and
social instability that follow. With this danger highlighted, the
audience becomes all the more invested in the success of Cleostrata, the
hero whose perseverance will save the innocent virgin from defilement.
Once the stakes are defined, Myrrhina's opposition serves no
further purpose and the audience can delight in watching the two friends
collude, along with the household slave Pardalisca, to humiliate the
master of the house. In fact, it appears that Myrrhina's argument
prevails because Cleostrata, with her friend's help, shifts her
focus from preventing the wedding to malting a fool out of Lysidamus.
Thus Myrrhina's argumentative behavior makes sense to the plot and
is written in a way that is consistent with her character.

Myrrhina is not simply Plautus's mouthpiece for the male
prospective, as many scholars have suggested. When Myrrhina explains the
male point of view on property rights and marital relationships, it is
easy to oversimplify the discussion as one of male versus female view
points, whether or not one takes the next step of mapping her lines onto
a male character in Diphilus's lost play. But we need not do this
in order to understand the interaction between these two women. In this
scene, Plautus shows that Myrrhina is aware of the limitations placed on
women by men: men have decreed that women cannot have property, and men
maintain tight control on their power over the women in their
households, both citizen and slave. Although aware of male culture,
Myrrhina does not represent it; rather, she uses her knowledge of male
culture to help her friend understand the unfortunate but likely
consequences of her actions.

Conclusions

Although few scholars would now attempt to explain inconsistencies
in Plautus as a product of contamination, the conviction that
inconsistencies exist in the first place has persisted. In the case of
Casina 2.2, that conviction manifests itself in the belief that
Myrrhina's character is an aberration in need of explanation. While
hypotheses that Plautus changed line attributions from the Greek model
or inserted a character from a different play have been abandoned, the
scene is still perceived as problematic: at best, scholars accept
Myrrhina's so-called inconsistent behavior because it is
dramatically necessary. The success of Plautus in his own time, however,
suggests that his plays were more than just adaptations, but were
internally consistent and worthy of Aristotle's criteria in the
Poetics for a good drama. (32) If the audience members were scratching
their heads in confusion at inconsistent characters, the play would have
flopped.

Nor should we always expect consistency, that is, flat characters,
for in Casina Plautus is playing with audience expectations for the
characters: Cleostrata first appears to be a typical uxor dotata, out to
usurp power from her husband, but we discover that she does it for noble
reasons; Lysidamus is introduced as the senex, but then revealed to be
the lecherous type who pursues inappropriate sexual liaisons (senex
amator); and Myrrhina is first portrayed as the 'good wife'
stock type, advocating unquestioning submission to one's husband,
but we soon see that she is simply a wise woman who knows how the system
works: she delights in challenging male authority so long as it is done
subversively. We are meant to perceive changes in several characters or,
rather, we are meant to assume, based on clues dropped by Plautus, that
Cleostrata and Myrrhina will be characterized in one way, so that we can
be delighted when they act contrary to our expectation. In fact, defying
the stock types seems to be a mark of skill. Plautus boasts that his
Captivi will not contain the expected characters: the periurus leno
(deceitful pimp), the miles gloriosus (boastful soldier), and the
meretrix mala (evil prostitute) (Capt. 57-8). Plautus did not make a
continuity mistake in Casina, but rather he made good comedy.

Implications for the Study of Comedy

For the modern reader, our problems of interpretation are inherent
to our role as outsiders, trying to learn about a culture from which we
are far removed. While Plautus's contemporaries watched his plays
with giddy anticipation, waiting to see what new twist the playwright
would bring to conventional plots, we, the modern readers, must make a
concerted effort to relocate ourselves into Plautus's world. For
better or for worse, we do this by looking for similarities to plays we
already know, and hence we map the exchange between Myrrhina and
Cleostrata onto similar exchanges between a father and daughter, like
the one in Plautus's Menaechmi. In doing so, we fail to see how
Plautus has changed not just the gender of the antagonist in this
debate, but also her motivations and tactics for deploying this
particular argument.

Likewise, our simplified understanding of the genre as one that
follows the affairs of the citizen male encourages us to think about the
female characters in relation to men; but if we approach the genre as a
comedy of manners and situations, we will not suffer the same
limitations. While we may be inclined to contemplate how each scene will
ultimately affect the young man's endeavors, we need not, when
viewing an exchange between two women, interpret one female character as
a proxy for a male. To do so would be to assume that the playwright had
no conception of relationships between women, no ideas about what
friendship between women might look like, and so he defaulted to what he
wrote best: relationships of women to men.

Instead, we should seek to understand what governs women's
social bonds with other women in the world of Plautus. Indeed, all three
surviving New Comic playwrights offer scenes in which female friends,
sisters, or mother-daughter pairs negotiate the terms of their
relationship, make personal sacrifices to help one another, and risk
animosity in order to protect a loved one (as Myrrhina does for
Cleostrata in Casina). A closer look, for example, at two pairs of
friends in Plautus's Cistellaria (the retired prostitutes Syra and
Melaenis, and their respective daughters, Gymnasium and Selenium), and
at Chrysis and her neighbor in Menander's Sarnia, will help us
understand how Plautus and Menander conceptualized female friendship.
Depictions of mother-daughter pairs in Plautus's Asinaria and
Cistellaria and in Terence's Adelphoe and Hecyra can show us how
social pressures govern the actions of mothers towards their daughters
and vice versa. (33) Several pairs of sisters (natural born sisters in
Plautus's Bacchides and Stichus and foster sisters in
Terence's Eunuch and Andria) give us insight into the nature of the
sisterly bond, the societal constraints placed upon women, and the
limited set of tools which women have to improve the lives of their
sisters. (34) It is worthwhile for us to reevaluate the dramatic
representation of the social world of women, because to assume that the
male social world is the only, or even the primary, governing factor in
relationships between women leads to misunderstandings of the text.

(1) Plautus did not divide his play into numbered acts and scenes,
but I use the conventional, post-Plautine assignations for the sake of
convenience. My thanks to Kathryn Gutzwiller, Barbara Gold, and Shelley
Haley for providing valuable feedback on early drafts of this article,
and to Ariana Traill for giving me direction on the project when it was
in its nascence.

(3) See Gold 1998, 22 for a discussion of how Plautus uses the
character of Casina, known only through representations by other
characters in the play to "negotiate the central issues in the
play: border crossings, the paradoxes of gender identification, and the
resistance of marginalized, hidden, and silent characters (women and
slaves)." Marshall (2015, 125) draws attention to the lack of
agency inherent to a woman of Casina's status: 'Any serva or
ancilla may serve as a potential sex partner at any time, since by law
she lacks agency and the right to choice."

(4) The first substantial chunks of Greek New Comedy were revealed
to us with the discovery of the Cairo Codex in 1907 (republished as
Riyad and Abd el-Kadr 1978), which contains large parts of
Menander's Sarnia, Epitrepontes, and Perikeiromene, a section of
the Heros, and a section of another untitled play. The Bodmer Papyrus
contains the most complete play that we have, Menander's Dyskolos,
and it was first published in Martin and Chenaux-Repond 1958.

(5) Extravagant solutions are still occasionally proposed, such as
that of O'Bryhim 1989, who argues that Plautus combined scenes from
two different plays, each of which had a Myrrhina. This proposal is
based on similarities between Casina and Plautus's own Mercator, a
source play that O'Bryhim argues Plautus reused when writing his
Casina (the other source play being Diphilus's Kleroumenoi).

(7) His solution is pure conjecture, as there is no evidence that a
male character made this speech in Diphilus's original.

(8) See Fraenkel 2007, 204-5 for the English translation. We should
note that many parallels between plays can be found on account of stock
characters and stock scenes.

(9) Cf. James 2015, 112: "Cleostrata has raised Casina as a
daughter, so her response to her husband's erotic designs on the
girl combines protectiveness toward Casina and repulsion at
Lysidamus's urge toward a form of incest."

(10) The text of Plautus's Casina is drawn from the new 2011
Loeb of De Melo. All translations are my own.

(11) See Fraenkel 2007, 203-4 for the English translation. Fraenkel
argues that in Diphilus's Kleroumenoi, Cleostrata was unaware of
her husband's amorous feelings until much later in the play, and
therefore line 195a in the Casina must be Plautine interpolation. His
hypothesis is meant to explain why, later in the play (Cas. 531),
Cleostrata expresses surprise when she learns of her husband's
sexual desire for Casina (as Fraenkel interprets the line). Jachmann
(1931, 108) counters Fraenkel's proposal, stating that
Diphilus's Cleostrata must have known about her husband's
amorous intentions, because her indignation is the very thing that
motivates her trip to the neighbor's house for advice. In a later
Italian translation, Fraenkel (1960, 434 note 281) states that he was
convinced by Jachmann's rebuttal. Slater (1985, 74-5) reconciles
the early line (Cas. 195a) with the later line (Cas. 531) by arguing
that the former is dramatically necessary in order to make the audience
side with Cleostrata against her husband, while McCarthy (2000, 89 note
23) finds no contradiction between these two lines at all, feeling that
the later line shows Cleostrata's surprise, not at learning of
Lysidamus's amorous feelings (for she already knew of them), but at
learning of his particular plan to get himself alone with Casina next
door.

(12) The sexual pursuit of a slave by her master "remained a
transgressive act that both undermined familia and ought to be kept
hidden at least from citizen women" (Marshall 2015, 126). On Casina
as sexual rival to Cleostrata, see also Richlin 2015, 35.

(13) James (2015, 111) provides further evidence that we are meant
to associate Cleostrata with the uxor dotata stock type, which is
signaled by her language throughout the play: "Cleostrata never
employs the soft speech (oratio blanda) that is thought to be typical of
women's language in comedy."

(14) The wives of Mercator and Menaechmi ask their wealthy fathers
to intervene when their husbands show interest in prostitutes (Merc. 796
and Men. 765-71), and Artemona of Asinaria says to her husband, faxo ut
scias quid pericli sit dotatae uxori vitium dicere (I'll make sure
you know how dangerous it is to speak ill of a dowered wife! 886-7). On
the dating of these three plays and the Casina: because of a remark in
Casina about the rarity of Bacchic revels these days (Cas. 980), the
Casina was likely written after the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalihus
of 186 BCE, which limited those activities; this would make the Casina
one of Plautus's last plays (De Melo 2011, 2: 7). On the basis of
style, the Asinaria and Mercator are dated to Plautus's early
career (De Melo 2011, 1: 137 and De Melo 2011, 3: 8, respectively) and
Menaechmi to the middle of his career (De Melo 2011, 1:419).

(15) On the different standards for male and female fidelity in
marriage, see Corbier 1991, 51; Treggiari 1991, 38-41; Shelton 1998,
54-5; and Braund 2005, 42-6. Plautus recognizes the double
standard--that men are free to have sex with slaves and prostitutes but
women must be faithful to their husbands--in Mercator 817-29.
Furthermore, Treggiari (1991, 40) states that both women and men were
judged negatively by the community if they pursued divorce for what was
considered to be a frivolous reason, but accusations of such moral
impropriety were lodged against women more often than men.

(16) My thanks to the anonymous reviewer who drew my attention to
this key difference between the rebellions of the housewife and servus
callidus.

(17) Cf. Moore 1998, 179: 'An additional motive must have been
the Saturnalian fun inherent in a wife overcoming her husband: the
success of the usually subservient wife would bring pleasure similar to
that produced by Plautus's many successful slaves."

(18) Cf. Marshall 2015, 129: "His single minded pursuit of his
domestic slave should be seen as morally reprehensible; it is not,
however, incomprehensible."

(19) Braund (2005, 46) explains the theme of morigera in Roman
comedy: a wife must be "compliant with her husband in domestic and
sexual matters." The expectation is shown by the household slave
Pardalisca in the Casina, when she asks a distressed Olympio if his new
bride (who is really a male servant in disguise) is satin morigera (Cas.
897-8), that is, satisfying his sexual expectations. Plautus's
Alcumena reinforces the idea, saying that her dowry consists of
pudicitiam, pudorem, sedatum cupidinem and morigera to her husband
(Amph. 840-1). Additionally, the uxor dotata of Menaechmi is reminded by
her father, quotiens monstravi tibi viro ut morem geras quid ilk faciat
ne id opserves, quo eat, quid rerum gerat (How many times have I told
you that you must be compliant with your husband's wishes, not pay
attention to what he is doing, where he is going, and how he conducts
his affairs? 788-9).

(20) For misogynistic jokes told by female characters in comedy,
see Dutsch 2008, 42-3. Other examples of Plautus putting misogynistic
jokes into the mouths of female characters can be found at Merc. 512-3,
Aul. 124-7, and Poen. 210-1.

(21) The line attributions and text for this passage appear in the
manuscript tradition as follows: my. obsecro face, nam hie nunc licet
dicere: nos sumus. cl. ita est. Lindsay (1903) emends face to dice to
make sense of the inherited text, but De Melo (2011, vol. 2), Naudet
(1830), and MacCary and Willcock (1976) all follow the innovative line
attributions of Acidalius (1607). The inherited text is problematic, and
both solutions recognize that the exchange is about self-censorship.

(22) Most interpret an ellipsis: nos sumus [solae] (We are alone);
but Naudet (1830, 585-6 ad loc.) believes that is unnecessary. He
explains the meaning as it stands as nos sumus [quae confabulamur, neque
quisquam adest arbiter] (We are the ones talking, and no one else is
present to judge us). Both interpretations come to the same thing: they
can speak freely because there are no other witnesses present.

(23) Text of Stichus is from Lindsay 1903. Translation is mine.

(24) As demonstrated in note 14 above, Casina dates to after 186
BCE. Wagenvoort (1932, 310-1) demonstrated that Stichus was most likely
performed in 200 BCE at a festival to celebrate Scipio's return
from Africa. Thus at least some of the audience might recall
Plautus's Stichus while watching the Casina.

(25) Myrrhina's statement that Cleostrata can have no property
because it all belongs to her husband makes it likely that Cleostrata
has entered into the manus of her husband, or at least that Myrrhina
assumes she has. By transferring into the manus of her husband, the wife
came under his potestas and all of her property became his (Treggiari
1991, 28-9). To envision a situation in which Cleostrata could own
property apart from her husband, she would have to be married sine manu
and no longer under the potestas of her own father, perhaps because he
had already died (Treggiari 1991, 32).

(26) Cf. Way 2000, 203: "Myrrhina advocates a more submissive
role, but this too is heavily invested in economic considerations."

(27) Ceasing to cohabitate and separating one's property
constituted divorce, and this could be initiated either by the husband,
by commanding his wife to move out, or by the wife, by moving out; no
public authority was involved. See Treggiari 1991, 33-4 and Borkowski
and du Plessis 2005, 128-9 on the initiation of divorce. Corbier (1991)
and Treggiari (1991) cover the social aspects of divorce more broadly.

(28) Cf. Braund 2005, 45: "[Myrrhina] argues for turning a
blind eye to her husband's love affairs--provided her home life is
comfortable--because of the risk of divorce."

(29) For an explication of this trope in Plautus's Stichus,
see Feltovich 2015.

(30) The relevant line in the epilogue reads, haec Casina huius
reperietur filia esse ex proxumo (This Casina will be found to be the
daughter of the man next door, 1013). Although huius can be masculine or
feminine, the audience would default to masculine and think of
Alcesimus. While Plautus does not explicitly state that Casina is the
daughter of Alcesimus by Myrrhina, again the audience would naturally
conclude that Myrrhina is her mother.

(31) Jachmann (1931) and James (2015) suggest that Cleostrata is
motivated by concern for her foster daughter's future, and while
there is no explicit evidence for this, it is certainly possible that
the audience would read such concern into Cleostrata's character.

(32) On the success of Plautus, the prologue of Casina tells us
that the play was revived some years after its initial performance, and
lines were added to the prologue to reflect this (Cas. 5-22), and that
it was met with approval during its initial performance (quam vos
probastis qui estis in senioribus; / nam iuniorum qui sunt non norunt,
scio [You who amongst the older generation have approved (this play);
those of you who are amongst the younger generation are not familiar
with it, I know, 14-5]).

(33) For an excellent argument on relationships between mothers and
daughters of the prostitute class in Plautus, see Dutsch, Forthcoming.

(34) For a detailed discussion of sisters, see Feltovich 2015.

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